The Republican War on Public Schools (vouchers, religion, graft, testing, etc.)
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Voucher programs and charter schools are a Band-Aid that doesn't actually fix the larger issue and often only helps the rich not the people who actually need it.
Fair enough, but since there doesn’t seem to be a general consensus of what the larger issues are, there’s no way to actually fix them.
basically my view on the entire world and why I often feel like there is no point to politics and I need to just focus on my own life and people.
Precisely. I've made it clear that I come to his board for the entertainment value. I'm not looking to change minds or win hearts. If it stops being fun because too many people are getting butthurt or the insults are starting to fly, I can easily find another distraction.
A major issue is the way teachers have been demonized by the right. Coupled with school administrations that frequently do not support their own teachers, and the result is good teachers leaving the profession and potentially good teachers deciding to do something else.
My mom was principal at a Title I elementary school. The school consistently did better than the other elementary schools in the district. When someone asked Mom how she did it, she said, "I hire good teachers and then I get out of their way."
We have differences in what and how things should be taught, I know. But if we can't address the disrespect targeted at teachers, you'll have a hard time fixing anything else.
I know of someone that did that. Still lives in Alabama but teaches in Georgia drawing Alabama retirement. Someone who started right out of college could stick it out until 62 could have 20 years in both states.
Anything coming from The Heritage Foundation is immediately suspect.
Project 2025 anyone?
And he works for a think tank run by Betsy DeVos's MIL. Very credible.
I listened to a really good podcast sometime in the last year that broke down some of the struggles with the way reading is taught in different school systems. It was called "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong"
It was honestly very depressing. Much of the issue was basically that people like making money selling their reading curriculum even when it was proven to be ineffective compared to things like phonics.
It was honestly very depressing. Much of the issue was basically that people like making money selling their reading curriculum even when it was proven to be ineffective compared to things like phonics.
It is amusing that the pro-choice crowd is anti-choice when it comes to garbage schools. How one can defend the indefensible is ... well, it's such a tribal thing to do.
Shouldn't one want America's kids to go to the best schools possible? We sent Lily to a private school in Virginia because the public schools weren't that great, and the private option was so much better. We still had to fund the public schools, which hardly seems fair. (The public schools aren't going to get better if you keep rewarding them.) When we moved to Florida, with its much better public schools, we had the choice on which public schools to send her. It is a very good set up here.
So, in Florida, one can escape bad public schools. In Virgina, one can only do so if one has extra money. If you don't have those resources, your kid is trapped. It seems the left is perfectly fine with that. It's never "do what's best for the kids." It's always "do what's best for the teachers unions and government bureaucrats."
Shouldn't one want America's kids to go to the best schools possible? We sent Lily to a private school in Virginia because the public schools weren't that great, and the private option was so much better. We still had to fund the public schools, which hardly seems fair. (The public schools aren't going to get better if you keep rewarding them.) When we moved to Florida, with its much better public schools, we had the choice on which public schools to send her. It is a very good set up here.
So, in Florida, one can escape bad public schools. In Virgina, one can only do so if one has extra money. If you don't have those resources, your kid is trapped. It seems the left is perfectly fine with that. It's never "do what's best for the kids." It's always "do what's best for the teachers unions and government bureaucrats."
"our schools suck, but because I have money I can take my kids out and move my tax dollars out too with a voucher, screw your kids"It is amusing that the pro-choice crowd is anti-choice when it comes to garbage schools. How one can defend the indefensible is ... well, it's such a tribal thing to do.
Shouldn't one want America's kids to go to the best schools possible? We sent Lily to a private school in Virginia because the public schools weren't that great, and the private option was so much better. We still had to fund the public schools, which hardly seems fair. (The public schools aren't going to get better if you keep rewarding them.) When we moved to Florida, with its much better public schools, we had the choice on which public schools to send her. It is a very good set up here.
So, in Florida, one can escape bad public schools. In Virgina, one can only do so if one has extra money. If you don't have those resources, your kid is trapped. It seems the left is perfectly fine with that. It's never "do what's best for the kids." It's always "do what's best for the teachers unions and government bureaucrats."
your entire argument
vouchers don't cover 100% and won't. If you want to pay for private fine go do it. But those tax dollars are to educate ALL kids not just yours.
Whoa.It is amusing that the pro-choice crowd is anti-choice when it comes to garbage schools. How one can defend the indefensible is ... well, it's such a tribal thing to do.
Shouldn't one want America's kids to go to the best schools possible? We sent Lily to a private school in Virginia because the public schools weren't that great, and the private option was so much better. We still had to fund the public schools, which hardly seems fair. (The public schools aren't going to get better if you keep rewarding them.) When we moved to Florida, with its much better public schools, we had the choice on which public schools to send her. It is a very good set up here.
So, in Florida, one can escape bad public schools. In Virgina, one can only do so if one has extra money. If you don't have those resources, your kid is trapped. It seems the left is perfectly fine with that. It's never "do what's best for the kids." It's always "do what's best for the teachers unions and government bureaucrats."
Let's start with "garbage schools". The only truly "garbage school" is one filled with kids coming from disastrously low economic areas where the parents have poor or no good choices for work, the community has degraded, and there's no solid culture of learning. We're created these areas, call them what you will, ghettos, wrong side of the tracks, etc.
Second, money can fix SOME of these issues, but as we all know, all that is important to so many voters is tax cuts. Who cares if the next generation suffers, as long as my tax bill goes down? Education is one of the best investments we can make in kids. Where else can you spend money for a bakers dozen years and get 48 more years of productivity and return funding from taxes?
Third, educators should be given the respect and honor they deserve for helping to educate the next generation. Far too much drivel is sent their way, unlike countries with great educations systems like Finland. And if we raise teacher pay, we overtime will get better applicants, who will be able to replace the burned out and lesser teachers. We respect and stop overloading teachers, we get better outcomes from better teachers.
Fourth, some areas show how to keep schools from being labeled "garbage schools" by making all the city schools magnets. They balance their populations through a lottery method for socioeconomic buckets.
None of the education system's problems are intractable, it's just we don't have the political will to solve it.
Wow. Weird take and 100% wrong. FTR, my wife and I didn't have much extra money while we lived in Virginia. We struggled to pay for a quality education for Lily, while still having to fund underperforming public schools.
Garbage schools aren't educating kids. That's kind of the point. Money should flow to good schools, be they other publics schools, private schools, wherever. I don't care, as long as kids are getting a quality education. You want to keep perpetuating bad schools.
Would you keep funding a restaurant that gave you food poisoning? Or would you take your money to some place good, thereby encouraging more good restaurants to flourish and the bad restaurants to fade away?
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I call them garbage schools because that's what they are. No one in their right mind would send their kids there if they had an alternative. It's not a lack of funding. I lived in an around DC most of my adult life. I'm also very familiar with Baltimore. The problem is not money. Schools are poorly run. The teachers and administrators are hardly the best, to put it kindly. The curriculum is very weak - passing kids on to the next grade when they don't have basic skills. And there is very often a lack of concern for education on the part of the family. No amount of social engineering and the waste of taxpayer dollars that comes with it is going to fix that.
Many of divisive issues we face in the US today aren't really solvable, as neither side see any middle ground as being allowable when discussing 'moral' issues. A couple of examples (I don't think we need to detract from this thread by discussing these issues, I'm simply pointing out fundamental differences which I don't think can realistically be solved, even if a majority feels one way or the other):
- abortion - the quintessential example. In general terms, one side feels life begins at viability, one believes life begins with a heartbeat. The pro-choicers generally believe that forcing the mother to carry an unwanted child before it is viable violates her human rights. The anti-choicers (I'm using this term as it feel less inflammatory) argue that cellular division or a heartbeat are how life is defined, so the terminating the pregnancy is killing a life. I can see both sides, and both sides feel their belief is what is 'right'. I don't see how either will ever budge.
- LGBTQ and children - one side wants discussion in schools, for example, as normalizing something that is outside of the child's experience makes them less likely to respond negatively as they grow up and are exposed to behaviors that fall 'outside the norm'. The other side feels that teaching kids anything about sexuality or behaviors that fall 'outside the norms' is in appropriate, that parents should decide when it's appropriate to begin talking about such things. I can see both sides, and both sides feel their belief is what is 'right'. I don't see how either will ever budge.
Those are just two quick examples of things that have become fairly divisive to our nations, both of which heavily straddle the rights / morality line. Both sides feel the other has it wrong, and that the future of our society hangs on 'getting it right'.
There's no point in arguing these things here, this thread isn't about those issues. But those issues are just two of many that are not 'black and white', though both sides take an extreme stance based on belief.
I don't know how to rectify these differences, which is why I largely throw my hands up wrt politics anymore.
Correct. The only way to fix this is to change the culture and the only way to do that is to take fix the social safety net problem we've created. I'm perfectly good with helping people who are down on their luck, but to create an entire subset of our population who rely exclusively on government assistance to survive has created much of this mess. Who needs an education when the government will take care of you?
In my younger days, I dated a woman who was a teacher in DC. It was extremely depressing. Most of the kids and their parents had absolutely no interest in school. And their entertainment was disrupting the few good kids from getting their education. My gf would come home crying many times because she could see the handful of smart kids that she had starting to be pulled down by the weight of all the garbage around them. I think she taught 6th grade. No way these kids were going to overcome all of that nonsense until they graduated high school.
School choice should mean being able to send your kids to another district if the schools you are assigned to are failing.
We never had that opportunity in MIssissippi since we were under forced-busing court orders. Which was why many of us white kids languished in crackpot segregationist academies. I hated the fact that we lived a half-mile from the Clinton MS city limits but we were zoned to the county schools. Sub-standard, 99% black, falling apart due to decades of Jim Crow.
I vowed that, when I had kids of my own, I would never put them through something like that. We moved to where the schools were outstanding.
We never had that opportunity in MIssissippi since we were under forced-busing court orders. Which was why many of us white kids languished in crackpot segregationist academies. I hated the fact that we lived a half-mile from the Clinton MS city limits but we were zoned to the county schools. Sub-standard, 99% black, falling apart due to decades of Jim Crow.
I vowed that, when I had kids of my own, I would never put them through something like that. We moved to where the schools were outstanding.
Nope, not a chance. And it's not like politicians care. Keeping the unions happy seems to be a much higher priority.
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